With the balls of a full-grown Brahma, MediaPost has stepped forward and declared that 2009 is the year of the ad exchange. We couldn’t agree more.
MediaPost and Media6’s Joe Doran writes:
“2008 saw the dominance of the exchange marketplace by RightMedia with ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ not far behind, but 2009 will see new entrants across the industry from Fox, Y! APT, Microsoft, Appnexus, BlueKai and many, many more.”
Wow, Joe. Microsoft’s AdECN totally dissed. Where’s DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange here? Missing in action, and perhaps with good reason, as their invitation-only, beta continues.
Doran adds that the need for transparency will drive the ongoing adoption of advertising exchanges by ad agencies as an important component of their online advertising strategies.
Placing Our Bets for 2009
We “see” Doran’s ante and “raise” with more reasons for a big step forward by ad exchanges in 2009:
1. Where else are publishers going to go? Publishers will have more unsold inventory than ever as they create more content while trying to capture their share of flat growth in overall advertising dollars.
2. Advertisers are under pressure. As Joe said, advertisers demand transparency because the dollars they control will be more scrutinized then ever in terms of showing ROI.
3. Ad exchanges provide lift to the limited inventory of search. As Comscore showed, display advertising can provide significant lift to integerated ad campaigns. This is great news for display ad exchanges and the tools which can tie all these together such as ClearSaleing and Microsoft’s Engagement Mapping initiative to name a few.
And finally, we’re “doubling down”…..
4. Google will come out with the big Magilla of advertising exchange strategies incorporating the DoubleClick Advertising Exchange, AdSense and AdWords.
